Google+

 Flipboard becomes prominent Google+ partner

Google isn't ready to open up a Google+ interface to just anybody yet, but it has done so with one important partner, flipboard.

An application programming interface (API) lets third-party software tap into a service, and opening the Google+ API will let people use Flipboard to read and publish Google+ posts and to comment on those posts.

Bradley Horowitz, the Google vice president of product management in charge of Google+, announced the move at the LeWeb conference in London. He showed off a prototype of the Google+-connected Flipboard software on an apple, but didn't say when it would arrive or when Google would open the Google+ API to other developers.

When might Google open it more broadly? Horowitz indicated that people should be patient: it'll happen "when we can do it in a way that we know is good for users," for example so people's Google+ streams don't get polluted with junk posts.

The quick demo showed Flipboard's typical interface, with its design of virtual pages that people can flip from one subject to another. One page showed various photos from a particular user, another textual comments, and a third a combination of some text with a large photos. He also showed a basic interface for posting a comment to Google+.

One interesting aspect of the demo is that Google, although it's released phone-centric apps for Google+, hasn't done so with iPads yet. The Google+-enabled Flipboard software even in its prototype state looked more polished than the iphone version scaled up to double-size resolution.